I don't think anyone ever had any illusions about Consequence's slim chances of rap stardom, even ten years ago when he was with Tribe, and it's hard to even read the intended irony into the title of his debut solo album, Don't Quite Your Day Job. Still, shit dropped with a whimper. I don't understand why Billboard is listing it on their independent albums chart, since, as it says right there, it was released by Columbia, so what the fuck. But if it is just Billboard's mistake, it's an understandable one, because it's totally going under the radar. It's a shame, I've always been rooting for him, and when I saw the College Dropout tour at UMBC I went to the merch table and had Cons sign a mixtape.

It's not like Kanye's G.O.O.D. Music's brief track record hasn't been successful so far; he took John Legend to platinum and brought Common back from the Electric Circus brink. So you'd think he'd be pulling out all the stops for the Consequence album, or at least making sure you knew it existed. It probably would've helped to drop it a few months after either Kanye album, when "Spaceship" or "Gone" was still fresh in the public's mind. Hell, the album was probably done all the way back then, but labels will push shit back for years just in case lightening strikes and the artist lands a hit single they can launch it with properly. But the crazy thing is, after Cons rhymed over dozens of Kanye beats on mixtapes, dude's barely on this.

Not that I'm mad at the relative lack of Kanye starpower on the album. He only produced one new song, and the other two that he appears on are both pretty old: "Grammy Family" from the DJ Khaled album, and the positively ancient "The Good, The Bad, The Ugly," which first appeared on Kanye's Get Well Soon mixtape in 2002. I remember posting it in a semi-nostalgic way over a year ago, after seeing footage on MTV of them shooting a video for the song, which has yet to see the light of day. Kanye can't even get that out on YouTube but he has time to make a video for his "Throw Some Ds" freestyle? Seriously, though, the non-Kanye beats are generally tight, and mostly by unknowns, and "Night Night," produced by Younglord The Truth, is really killing me right now. Consequence's mushmouth delivery never totally does his flow justice, but that's kinda part of his charm. I'm just sayin', I wouldn't feel real great about my career right now if I was GLC.